I. Field
The following description relates generally to wireless communications, and more particularly to methods and apparatuses for receiving data packets of varying size.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication; for instance, voice and/or data can be provided via such wireless communication systems. A typical wireless communication system, or network, can provide multiple users access to one or more shared resources (e.g., bandwidth, transmit power, etc.). For instance, a system can use a variety of multiple access techniques such as Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM), Time Division Multiplexing (TDM), Code Division Multiplexing (CDM), Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), High Speed Packet (HSPA, HSPA+), and others. Moreover, wireless communication systems can be designed to implement one or more standards, such as IS-95, CDMA2000, IS-856, W-CDMA, TD-SCDMA, and the like.
In designing a reliable wireless communication system, special attention must be given to particular data transmission parameters. For instance, so as to avoid data packets being inadvertently lost, a transmitter generally transmits data at a rate that ensures no overflow at the receiver buffer. Current methods and systems generally prevent overflow by simply monitoring the number of packets received at the receiver buffer and communicating this information to the transmitter. For example, if the size of each data packet is a fixed value and the receiver buffer size is known, the transmitter may simply multiply this fixed packet size by the communicated number of packets received, and limit the flow of data accordingly.
For some applications, however, it may be desirable to transmit data packets of varying size. For such applications, since there is no fixed data packet size, simply communicating the number of packets received is insufficient for determining the overflow status of a receiver buffer. Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a method and apparatus for preventing overflow at a receiver buffer where data packets of varying size are transmitted.